Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a filling unit for use in filling a confectionery product into molds or containers, including a fill housing with a filling nozzle and a dosing piston, wherein the dosing piston is displaceably provided in a cylinder in the filling unit.
Description of Related Art
The invention also concerns a method for filling a confectionery mass, such as ice-cream, into a container or a mold.
The invention is particularly suited for filling any air-containing and thereby compressible confectionery product as, e.g., ice-cream, sorbet, mousse and the like. However, the invention can also be used for filling airless confectionery masses, including e.g., water-based ice mass. The invention will be explained in connection with ice cream but is not limited to this product only.
It is known to use filling units that can fill ice cream into containers of different kinds, including, e.g., conventional molds for ice cream where the ice cream is taken out of molds and subsequently packed, or discrete containers of e.g., plastic and/or suitable paper/paperboard/carton packings, or e.g., cones and other edible containers. These filling units are normally arranged in a filling arrangement where several filling units are mounted such that a row or an array of containers is filled at once.
These prior art filling units normally include a fill housing and a piston that doses the ice cream through a filling nozzle and down into containers arranged under the nozzles. An example of a prior art filling unit is disclosed in European Patent Application EP 0839002 A and corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 5,911,813. Therein is described a filling unit with a fill housing where a dosing piston doses ice cream with one or more colors to containers that are disposed under the mouthpiece/filling nozzle of the filling unit. When filling with several different ice cream masses, e.g., with different color and/or taste, the piston is provided with external ducts for one type of ice cream and is possibly hollow such that another type of ice cream can be dosed through the hollow part of the piston. A pattern can thereby be achieved in the confectionery product which is about the same in all cross-sections in the filling direction.
However, this type of filling units has several drawbacks. The dosing piston itself is obviously a technically complicated design. This dosing piston is also complicated to clean, in particular the ducts in the dosing pistons. Furthermore, the individual filling unit is, due to the design of the piston, fixed to dose the ice cream in a certain way or in a very few different ways.